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Jimmy Fallon makes debut as Tonight Show host

The TV institution returns to New York after four decades on the West Coast.

Jimmy Fallon debuts as host of his new show, The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon on Feb. 17. (Lloyd Bishop / AP)

By Frazier MooreThe Associated Press

Mon., Feb. 17, 2014

NEW YORK, N.Y.—Little more than a week after exiting Late Night, Jimmy Fallon makes his much-anticipated debut Monday as host of NBC’s Tonight Show, as the venerable TV institution returns to New York after four decades based on the West Coast.

Scheduled guests are U2 and Will Smith, with the show reclaiming Rockefeller Center’s Studio 6B, where Tonight aired during its early Johnny Carson years.

Fallon, who had hosted Late Night since 2009, moves up to the job Jay Leno held for much of the past 22 years until his recent departure from the Tonight host chair.

The 39-year-old Fallon first found stardom as a cast member and Weekend Update co-anchor on Saturday Night Live. He left SNL in 2004 to pursue a movie career, but he was met with less success in that arena.

Despite the excitement surrounding his new Tonight stint (much of it expressed by Fallon himself), he has also emphasized that Tonight under his regime won’t be notably different from the show his Late Night had evolved into.

Although airing an hour earlier than Late Night (but this week seen at a special time, midnight Eastern), The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon will feature many of the same comic bits, the same house band, the Roots, and announcer-sidekick Steve Higgins.

Filling the vacancy left by Fallon at Late Night will be fellow SNL alum Seth Meyers, who signs on as host next Monday, with Fred Armisen, yet another former SNL-er, as band leader.

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